Hi

  My name is Black.

  I need your help. My life and everyone else's depends on it.

  I know this sounds insane. I wouldn’t believe it either.

  But if you're reading this, it means this message was meant for you.

  Please, listen.

  Focus on every word I say, because if you don’t, if you ignore this like it’s nothing, I might not make it through this.

  The Beginning

  I never liked college.

  Too many people. Too many expectations. Too many things I didn’t care about.

  I didn’t need friends. I didn’t need validation. And because of that, I stuck out.

  Which only annoyed me more.

  At seventeen, I was just another face in the crowd—tall, lean, forgettable. I kept my head down, spoke only when necessary, and stayed invisible. It was easier that way.

  No friends. No girlfriend, not that I cared.

  My parents were rich, but they lived abroad. I lived alone in a PG, exactly how I liked it. No one to bother me. No one to tell me what to do.

  I spent all my time chasing the only thing that mattered.

  Crime.

  Not committing it but solving it.

  I wasn’t a detective, but I could’ve been. I was better than most.

  Hours, days, weeks dissecting cold cases. Lurking in crime forums. Breaking down police reports the world had forgotten.

  When I wasn’t hunting for answers, I gamed. Played guitar. Boxed just enough to keep myself in shape. But those were just distractions. The puzzles always pulled me back in.

  And recently, I had done something reckless.

  I had hacked into the FBI database.

  I know. Stupid. Dangerous. But the rush of cracking something forbidden, of seeing the truth no one else could? I needed it.

  It took weeks of planning. I wasn’t stupid enough to attack head-on. Instead, I found an old subdomain, barely monitored, running outdated software. Using Shodan, I confirmed it was still active. A few SQL injections later, I slipped through.

  One forgotten contractor’s account. That was all it took.

  And suddenly, I was inside.

  The FBI’s internal database.

  I should have stopped. Logged out. Wiped my tracks.

  But I didn’t.

  I kept digging. Searching.

  And that’s when I found files I was never supposed to see. Names. Locations. Operations buried under layers of encryption. Some were cold cases, others… still active.

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  For two months, I had locked myself in my room, piecing together puzzles the world had forgotten. I didn’t need friends. I didn’t need summer trips or late-night hangouts.

  I just needed more time.

  But time was running out.

  Tomorrow was June 1.

  Summer was over. College was waiting.

  A lead weight settled in my chest.

  I wasn’t ready to go back. Back to lectures that blurred together, deadlines that piled up, and the endless noise — students shouting across hallways, pointless gossip filling the air, and professors droning on about things I’d forget the moment I left the room.

  College wasn’t just a waste of time — it was pointless.

  My parents were rich. I didn’t need a degree. I didn’t need to waste years chasing something I’d never use.

  Crime. Patterns. Puzzles.

  I’d spent the summer buried in codes and forums, peeling back layers of twisted logic and digital footprints. It was the only thing that made sense. The only thing that felt... right.

  But tomorrow? Tomorrow meant snapping back to reality. Pretending to care about things I didn’t.

  Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, I muttered under my breath:

  "I wish tomorrow never comes."

  The words left my lips without thought.

  I didn’t mean them.

  But something heard.

  The Nightmare

  I don’t know when I fell asleep.

  One moment, I was in bed. The next—

  Darkness.

  Not just any darkness. Absolute.

  Like the world had been erased.

  Like I had been erased.

  No light. No ground beneath me. No sense of my own body. Just an abyss so vast, so consuming, that even my thoughts felt swallowed by it.

  Then—

  A sound.

  A faint, wet slithering, distant yet closing in.

  I held my breath. Listened.

  It was subtle at first, like something shifting, coiling in the dark. Then it grew—closer, louder, faster.

  A sickening scrape. A guttural click-click-click.

  Something was crawling.

  I tried to move.

  I couldn’t.

  The slithering quickened, echoing all around me.

  Then... a whisper.

  Low. Jagged. Spoken in a voice that wasn’t human.

  "Found you."

  A chill shot down my spine.

  I thrashed. Or tried to. My limbs wouldn’t respond. My breath hitched, trapped in my chest.

  The thing in the dark slithered closer. Closer.

  A deep, gurgling rasp filled the void, like air forcing through something that shouldn’t be breathing.

  I strained to see. Nothing.

  Then—

  A brush against my skin.

  Cold. Slimy. Not a hand, not fingers—something else.

  It wrapped around my ankle.

  I gasped—tried to kick, to scream—

  But the grip tightened.

  Then, with a violent YANK, it pulled me downward.

  A force like nothing I had ever felt—like my entire body was unraveling, being ripped from reality itself.

  Pain exploded in every nerve. My vision swam with bursts of red.

  I opened my mouth—finally, a scream

  But no sound came out.

  And then—

  Everything shattered.

  May 32

  I shot up, gasping.

  Air tore into my lungs like I'd been drowning. My heart hammered, a frantic, uneven rhythm slamming against my ribs. My skin—ice-cold. My entire body was aching, like I’d been crushed and reassembled.

  A dream.

  Just a nightmare.

  I pressed a trembling hand to my chest, forcing myself to breathe. In. Out. Slow. Steady.

  But it felt too real.

  My phone buzzed.

  I grabbed it, desperate for something normal. Something real.

  7:00 AM.

  I exhaled sharply, then my eyes landed on the date.

  May 32.

  I frowned. Blinked.

  Still May 32.

  A weird glitch? A prank? I rubbed my eyes and checked again.

  Nothing changed.

  A strange tightness coiled in my stomach.

  I sat up, scanning my room. My laptop. My wall calendar. My alarm clock.

  All of them said the same thing.

  A chill crept down my spine.

  I reached for the TV remote with stiff fingers and switched it on.

  "Good morning! Today is May 32nd, and we have some breaking news—"

  The remote slipped from my hand, clattering onto the floor.

  I stopped breathing.

  This wasn’t a mistake.

  This wasn’t possible.

  I grabbed my phone again, scrolling through social media, news sites, forums

  Nothing.

  No one was talking about it.

  No one but me.

  A hollow pit opened in my chest.

  I turned to my laptop. Maybe if I restarted everything, it would fix itself. Maybe I was still dreaming. Maybe—

  The screen flickered.

  Static crawled over the display, distorting the colors. Patches of black flickered in and out.

  And then—

  For a split second—

  I saw it.

  A reflection.

  Something.

  Someone.

  Standing behind me.

  I spun around so fast my vision blurred.

  Nothing.

  A cold sweat prickled down my back.

  Slowly, I turned back to the screen.

  New words had appeared.

  "YOU WISHED FOR THIS."

  My breath hitched. My hands went numb.

  No.

  No, no, no—

  I slammed the laptop shut, my pulse a deafening roar in my ears.

  Had I done this?

  Had my stupid wish broken time?

  And suddenly—

  I woke up again.

  But this time—

  everything had changed.